Investigation of 8th grade students' mathematics anxiety levels and causes during the COVID-19 outbreak process

The aim of this study is to determine the mathematics anxiety of 8th grade students during the Covid-19 epidemic process and to examine the reasons. Convergent parallel mixed method design was used in the research. 330 8th grade students studying at public schools in the central district of Yalova province participated in the research. Data were collected online and face to face. Mathematics Anxiety-Apprehension Survey was used to collect quantitative data and unrelated samples t-test was used for data analysis. In the research, a semi-structured interview form with open-ended questions prepared by the researchers was used in order to examine the mathematics anxiety of the 8th grade students in the Covid-19 epidemic process. Qualitative data were analyzed using the content analysis method and thematic coding was done. It has been determined that math anxiety in students creates a significant difference according to gender and being Covid-19 in the immediate environment. It has been determined that female students and students who state that there is no Covid-19 in their immediate environment have higher math anxiety. Situations that worry students during the epidemic; Situations caused by Covid-19 are determined as psychological situations, educational situations and sociological situations. When the reasons for anxiety of the students were examined, it was seen that they had negative perceptions about the mathematics lesson, mathematics success, mathematics, HSEE, and new generation questions, while they had positive perceptions of the mathematics teacher. It has been observed that the positive and negative perceptions of using mathematics in daily life are close in number. This study contributes to the field in terms of revealing students' math anxiety and reasons in detail during the pandemic process.